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Memoirs & Diaries - August 1914

Like so many others when
war was declared, I applied at once to the St. John Ambulance, to which I
belonged, to know if there was any possibility of their making use of me, my
only recommendation being three months' training in the London Hospital.

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I was told that only
trained nurses were wanted, and so gave up hope, but three days later the
British Red Cross got an appeal for forty nurses to be sent out to Belgium;
five St. John Ambulance nurses (V.A.D.'s later on) were being sent, and I
was asked if I would go.

I naturally accepted with
alacrity, and August 14th found us in Brussels. Most of us were taken
to the Hotel Metropole, where we were to await orders. As there was a
big battle expected any day, we should all be badly wanted.

Next day some of the nurses
were sent to hospitals outside Brussels, and others, including M., my cousin
(who was a fully trained nurse), and myself, were given posts in the Royal
Palace, which posts, however, we never filled, as the next thing we heard
was that the Germans were outside the gate of Brussels, and all the allied
wounded were to be evacuated to Antwerp.

We were then given the
option of returning to England at once; some returned, but we, M. and I
amongst others, elected to remain, as we were told we were wanted outside
Brussels.

At 3 p.m. next day the
Germans marched in; it was a soul-stirring sight, seeing these impassive and
tired-looking troops marching in to what seemed like a deserted town, every
door and window shuttered and barred, and not a civilian to be seen, or a
sound to be heard, save the steady tramping of the German troops, regiment
after regiment, guns, cavalry, Uhlans with their fluttering pennons on their
lances.

One felt that thousands of
Belgians were waiting and watching behind their shuttered doors and windows,
with bated breath and terrible anxiety lest anyone or anything should cause
a disturbance, and so bring down the punishment of the enemy.

However,
nothing happened, owing to the notices which had been posted up everywhere,
and the wonderful influence of Burgomaster Max, who had implored everyone to
be careful and to give no cause or excuse for trouble. Brussels being
an unfortified town, he had begged the people to help in a peaceful
occupation.

His words had the right
effect and, after a time, doors and windows were opened, and cafes put their
chairs and tables outside again, and the town gradually resumed its everyday
life, but with a strong undercurrent of fear and consternation at the
terrible feeling that the enemy was really in occupation, and Brussels under
German rule.

Panics were easily started
these days, and one sometimes met a crowd tearing down a street
terror-stricken, crying that the French were outside the gates and a battle
beginning, and one had to turn and run with the crowd till the panic was
over.

We heard there were a
number of wounded lying not far outside Brussels, and M. and I tried to get
a car to take us out there to pick them up, but the Germans would not allow
a car outside the gates just then, so we took a tram as far as we could,
then walked, but could find no trace of them.

On our return from a trip
out beyond the gates we heard we had been applied for, M. and I, to go to
Charleroi to join a matron and two nurses who had gone there a few days
before. We were given ten minutes to get ready, and were very glad to
leave the hotel (which by this time was full of German officers), and to
feel we were at last wanted. As there had been no fighting in
Brussels, there was very little need for nurses.

We were raced off in a car
by the Belgian Red Cross, and were dumped down late in the evening at one of
the hospitals in Charleroi; but could find no trace of our compatriots,
though we searched all the hospitals, nor could we get any news of them.

The town was still burning,
and most of the houses were shelled, and had gaping windows and large shell
holes, and the streets were littered with broken glass and bits of
furniture; but every house flew a white flag of some sort, which had been no
help to them, as the Germans said they had been fired on.

It
was now getting very late, and we were told nothing could be done till the
morning, so we gratefully accepted the offer of one bed from a kindly
Belgian. We spent a sleepless night. The guns sounded so close
and shook the house, and it was with great relief we saw the day break, and
we started once more on our search, this time with more success, as we heard
they were at a hospital at Marcinelle, five miles out of Charleroi.

We trudged there, leaving
our luggage to follow, and found the matron and nurses in a semi-equipped
hospital, desperately busy, and worn out with all the wounded who had been
brought in a few days before from the battlefields nearby.

The German wounded, slight
cases and dying, had all been evacuated the day before we arrived, and we
took this as a good sign that the Allies were near, especially as we heard
the guns so close, but this was not the case, as the fighting was in reality
getting further away.

We had plenty of work,
though no fresh wounded. The hospital was originally intended for a
civil hospital, but before it was finished the War broke out, and it had to
be hastily equipped as a front line hospital, and in consequence was very
badly supplied, and though we found beautiful electric appliances none of
them were in working order, and all water had to be heated on a small stove,
and many beds were without mattresses.

Our matron very soon left
us to look up some other nurses in Brussels. She took the offer of a
seat in a car going there, and that was the last we saw of her. M. had
been left in charge.

The wounded were all
French, and we found them extremely nice to look after. They were most
grateful for all we did, and were much amused at the amount of cleaning and
washing required by the English nurses, those of them that were well enough.

We had many exciting
incidents and thrilling moments, especially when the German guards came
round, as we never knew what they might be coming for. It was
sometimes a search for a deserter, or to see that none of our patients were
escaping.

We never knew that it might
not be to march us off, as rumour had it that we should be sent to Germany.
Life was one continual series of shocks; strange noises made us think we
were being shelled; the electric light going out one night made us vividly
imagine we were going to be blown up.

Many
of these scares ended in laughter, the Frenchmen ragging us for our
crises de nerfs, but they did not quite like it themselves, lying
helpless in bed.

We had a very busy time,
but our patients were being gradually taken to concentration hospitals in
Charleroi or to Germany as soon as they were fit to move, and we realized
that our work before long would come to an end, and we began to wonder what
was to become of us.

We had had no news for a
long time, all means of communication having been stopped. We had no
idea what had happened anywhere, or what the English nurses in and around
Brussels were doing, so thought we must try and get news somehow from
Brussels.

We found a Belgian who had
means of going there, and we asked him to put our case before the American
Minister, who, we knew, had been asked to look after British interests.
We wanted some money advanced on our cheques, as we had practically nothing
left, and for help to return to Brussels or England.

The only answer we got to
our appeal from the U.S.A. Legation was that we were on no account to go to
Brussels; that they could give us no money, and that we were to ask the
German Commandant in Charleroi to give us a pass to England or Maastricht
via Germany.

This answer completely
nonplussed us, as we did not want to advertise the fact that we were four
English nurses alone in a hospital inside the German lines, especially as we
had heard a rumour that some of the nurses who had been in and around
Brussels, and who were supposed to have been sent to England by the Germans,
were last heard of in Russia.

All these reports made us
very unwilling to apply to the German Commandant for passes; so we decided
to wait till our last wounded had been taken, hoping something might turn
up.

Food
was getting beautifully less and less, meat very occasional, and we lived
for the most part on beans and potatoes and soup made of the same, flavoured
with many fryings in the frying-pan.

This, by the way, got me
into severe trouble with the old cook, Mme. Gustave, because when I, on
night duty, had to warm up our scanty meal, washed and scoured the
frying-pan, I was told next day that I had completely ruined the soup and
beans for ever, as we now would never get enough meat or onions to bring
back the flavour of so many fryings.

I never heard the end of
that flavouring. The bread was black and sometimes so hard we couldn't
eat it, and other times so doughy that when thrown at the wall it stuck.
We very, very rarely, as a great treat, had a mouthful of white bread given
us by some kindly Belgians.

By now our last man had
been taken from us, and we felt that something must be done at once, so,
much against our feelings, we bearded the German Commandant, who kept us
waiting for a very long time, and we heard the orderly we had spoken to
first, and who spoke English very well, telling the Commandant that we
wanted passes to England via Germany or Maastricht.

This he flatly refused,
saying we must remain in Charleroi; nothing would move him, and so we
returned crestfallen to Marcinelle.

Having now no work to do,
we spent our days making definite plans to escape. Our only anxiety
was to get away quickly before the Germans could get any inklings of our
efforts. We had been cheerfully assured by the Belgians that, if they
did get wind of them, we should undoubtedly be shot. This we were more
than ready to believe, and many a time had visions of being lined up against
the wall.

We managed at last to get a
small sum of money lent us by our Belgian friends, and after many hours of
talking we I finally came to the conclusion that our best plan would be to
accept the offer of a Belgian mine-owner, who offered us the use of his coal
miners' ambulance to take us part of the way.

We were advised to leave in
the dead of night, and we arranged to dine with our friends the following
night, telling the concierge at the hospital, whom we did not trust, that we
should be spending the night with them. This we did, taking only a
string bag with toothbrushes, etc., and dressed in mufti, with our Red Cross
brassards sewn in the bottom of our skirts.

After
a marvellous dinner to speed us on our way, the ambulance picked us up at 2
a.m. Two Belgian women accompanied us, as it was thought safer to go
in a party. We had many nerve-racking moments when we met sentries and
guards, especially crossing the bridge out of Charleroi, the driver
explaining that we were a miners' ambulance; after a few words he passed us
on.

In the early morning we
arrived at Fleurus, where we took the tram to Namur, and where we arrived in
a snowstorm, and then on to Liege, partly trams, partly trudging.
These last two towns, as well as villages along the route, were in ruins.

We had palpitating moments
when the sentries on the trains asked for our papers; all we had were "laisser-passer"
as far as Liege, which our friends had somehow managed to wangle out of the
Germans, stating we were Belgians going to see sick relations.

These we showed, but
fortunately we struck men who could not read French, but we murmured
something which seemed to satisfy them. Before starting on our journey
we had agreed that M. and I would do the talking, as the other two nurses
did not speak French, and we naturally did not want it known we were
English.

We spent the night at
Liege, a room having been found for us, starting off the next morning early,
feeling we had the most difficult part of the journey before us with the
frontier to pass. We were thrust into a market cart going to
Maastricht with vegetables. All this had been arranged for us by our
Marcinelle friends, who had found out that Liege market-women carried on a
trade taking refugees over the border.

Just before arriving at the
frontier the owner of the cart said she could only risk three across, so
that the other three must manage as best they could. A Belgian, one
nurse and myself got out, and the cart drove on with the others.

We walked a bit, then
started to cross a field, and had just crawled under some barbed wire, and
were beginning to feel we had escaped, as we thought it was the frontier,
when, to our horror a loud voice called on us to halt, and we looked round
and found a sentry covering us with his rifle.

So
we turned back, as we knew that if any of us tried to run for it one of us
would, at least, be shot. The sentry then asked for our papers.
This was a blow, as they only allowed us to Liege, and here we were well on
the way to Maastricht. However, the man seemed only to worry about the
German stamp, and, seeing that, told us we must go back to the road and in
through the proper douane.

This we knew we could never
do. There wasn't a hope of our being allowed through, but we walked in
that direction, and further on tried again to cross, where we came on
another sentry. This time we did not try to pass him, but came back
again to the road, making up our minds as we walked on to bluff the next one
if we met with one.

We did meet with one and he
was busy with a young Belgian who wanted to cross, so we hurriedly pushed
our German stamp out for him to see and pressed some money into his hand and
walked away as unconcernedly as we could, and again crawled under the barbed
wire, expecting any moment that we might be shot at.

However, this time we were
safely across, but to our horror another sentry appeared, only he turned out
to be a Dutchman who laughed at our scared faces.

By this time we were almost
without feeling one way or another: the strain since leaving Marcinelle had
been so great, as we were always terrified that our escape had been
discovered and that we might be arrested at any moment. We stumbled on
to the market place at Maastricht, where we found the others, who had got
safely over.

We had no sooner found
rooms in a hotel when a message was brought us from a man who wished to see
us, and it turned out that he was an Englishman over there on military
business, and wanted some very important papers taken to a certain
Government office in London. We were not too keen about it, but
eventually agreed to take them.

The next day we took train
to Flushing, and after some difficulty, owing to our having no papers on us,
and only our Red Cross brassards stamped with the German stamps in Brussels,
we got passages across to Folkestone, where the authorities found it
difficult to believe our story, and where we were detained till they had
made enquiries at the British Red Cross headquarters in London.

So this was the last of our
troubles, and we were thankful to be back once more in England. Our
reward came in the shape of the Mons Star.

Miss Esmee Sartorius,
after returning from Belgium, continued nursing for the Red Cross in England
until 1918, when she was sent to a British Red Cross Hospital for Italians
on Lake Garda.